weekend writing
dan harmon’s master classes
other things i didn’t write about this past week: dan harmon being fired from community, which is a hollywood thing that happens but shitty all the same. i have never been the most ardent watcher of community - mostly because jessica likes to watch it alone, out of habit from when she was unemployed and first became a fan - but i have gone with her now to a number of panel thingies where dan harmon rambles about storytelling.
here’s one good example from a letter dan harmon wrote to kellyoxford’s kid about the film “monster house”:
I think a good story, even if it is sad or scary while you’re watching it, should always make you a little less scared after you’ve seen it. Because even a scary story, if it’s a good scary story, takes us into strange, dark places that don’t make sense at first, and helps us see that they do make sense, and are therefore not so scary.
And that didn’t happen in Monster House. The kids go inside the house, and everything’s scary in there, but nothing starts making more sense. I don’t know about you, but when I go inside a giant scary monster, I expect to be rewarded for my bravery. There should always be something inside a monster that helps you understand it, and makes you less scared of it, and able to make the monster go away. Not just a bunch of stuff that makes you more confused and scared.
one year (maybe the first) at paleyfest, he talked about how he built the dynamics of the characters by using sociology 101 - all the parts that played by different social groups (in this case represented by characters) in any given world. i’ve taken my fair share of writing classes and read all the usual screenwriting books, and that simple statement knocked me on my ass. it made me think so differently about every ensemble show i’d ever watched or contemplated writing.
community didn’t become a cult favorite because it’s kooky or unconventional. this show’s fans are deeply devoted because at the heart of this weird little dramedy is a man who is - painfully - committed to showing us unflinchingly what kind of people we all are capable of being or becoming. that’s what all stories should do, even though on TV they so rarely do. that’s what will be missing without him.
Attention All John Hughes Fans. This just happened.
/dead
This just happened because of SHANA. :D
one thing i missed in all the madness of last week was that a screencap of these tweets had some moderate viral success on tumblr! which makes me happy all over again for having had the opportunity to help instigate.
there are a lot of things, still, to love about pretty in pink. when i was younger, it meant a lot to me to have a film speak so frankly about class, about being a poor girl who went to school with a bunch of rich kids (as did i), about being a weird outsider with weird, occasionally age-inappropriate friends.
i stole a lot from pretty in pink for my screenplay beautiful disaster, including the scene where kelly struts around the recycled fashion store, playing dress-up. i even squeezed in a little bit of the psychedelic furs song - i’d always wondered how deliberate it was on john hughes’ part that the lyrics aren’t triumphant as much as they are tragic (“she doesn’t have anything you’d want to steal / well, nothing you can touch”).
we are our influences, i guess, and this is a roundabout way of just saying thank you.
Elementary - Exclusive Preview (by CBS)
more sherlocks! more!
also i really hope this is as good as advertised and not, say, like NYC 22. because it looks really good and after last season’s southland i need lucy liu on my TV every week.
front page
my friends Josh and Nicole write about stuff they want to do and then do it, or sometimes do stuff and then write about how you can do it. either way, they had a dream to form an intentional community somewhere this summer, to make art and help people. they’re totally nailing it so far.
I love how real this became.
Cenk, Ana Kasparian, Michael Shure, Jayar Jackson, Jimmy Dore and Shana Krochmal talk about two Army reservists who are suing to speed up the military’s loosening of the ban on women officially serving in combat. “Technically women are fighting on the front lines already,” Kasparian points out. Shure says, “One thing you have to remember is that we have a volunteer army.” Faced with an entire panel peppering him with sensible arguments in favor, Cenk finally folds.
this is what happens when I tell our host how wrong he is.
What if men were photographed the way women typically are?
it would be super hot, that’s what
Vice President Joe Biden, in a moving speech to families of fallen troops on Friday, recounted the dark days following the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter and talked about having thoughts of suicide.
This is a really moving piece, but especially for anyone who’s struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide. The thing that pulled Biden out of his depression was when a senator called him and gave him the idea for a grief logbook:
The caller told Biden to start marking in a calendar each day how he felt, and that, after a few months, he would find that he still had dark days but that they would grow fewer and further apart.
“He said, ‘That’s when you know you’re going to make it,’’” Biden said.
he is the best “loose cannon” vp/2nd 1st lady.
Jon Cryer responds to Molly Ringwald saying Duckie from ‘Pretty in Pink’ was gay - Pop2it - Zap2it
i think this is amazing - i don’t know that i’d say duckie was only “slightly” effeminate (and anyone who knows me knows that’s because i so enthusiastically cheer on the more-than-slightly effeminate boys of the world), but i love that he weighed in and his respect for the alternative.
best thing I did at work today was produce this:
Michael Shure talks to the NAACP’s chairman emeritus, Julian Bond, about the board of directors’ historic vote in support of equal marriage rights. “The black community has been — unfairly, I think — characterized as being overwhelmingly hostile to this idea of gay rights and gay marriage,” Bond says. “Even though we didn’t time this to fit with President Obama’s statements on gay marriage, his statements helped us enormously. When he said he believed in equal marriage, it made it okay for ordinary black people to say, ‘I believe in it too.’”
